How to naturally manage anxiety and stress, and find happiness.
INTRO STORY
One of the worst experiences of anxiety was induced by an ill health condition. I was constantly diagnosed with bacterial vaginosis from as young as 13 years old.
If I did a test regularly for 6 months, 4 of 6, I’d be diagnosed with one infection or another. It even led to more dramatic diseases in my reproductive system.
By the time I was 22, I already lost one fallopian tube to the recurrent infection. That was the last straw that broke me completely.
I was always living in anxiety about my health. A strong fear of doing things that would cause an infection. Most importantly, I also had no clue what I was doing.
I took so many antibiotics, my body developed immunity to them. Sometimes my urine was blood red because of the antibiotics. Though they worked for about a few weeks or days, I’d have to start all over. Or take a “more potent” one. Unquestionably, my family was fed up, and so was I sincerely.
Out of frustration, I skipped going to the hospital for 3 months. Of course, I returned on the 4th month to more bad news: I had yet another infection. Breaking down in the doctor’s hospital had been my MO.
That night, I had stayed up doing nothing but bawling my eyes out. My family felt sorry for me, they tried to console me. But deep down I just felt this nagging sense of doom and threats to my life. Most definitely didn’t want another surgery, and I didn’t want to die. I was confused, I felt betrayed by life, and felt very helpless.
What Is Anxiety?
MedlinePlus defines anxiety as a “feeling of fear, dread, and uneasiness. It might cause you to sweat, feel restless and tense, and have a rapid heartbeat. It can be a normal reaction to stress”
Nonetheless, anxiety is caused by a lot of things, past experiences, trauma, loss, chronic health conditions, etc.
Basically, it is an emotion that can distort your daily life and function. Anxiety can altogether cripple your thinking and understanding of things.
There are habits that make anxieties worse and destroy any chance of the peace you so desperately need.
I needed to learn to change my way of looking at my plague. That really helped me manage my condition better. I began to look towards myself for clues, could I have been doing anything to make my recurring infections more frequent?
5 habits that worsen anxiety
These 5 habits are based on my personal experiences. I had to take time to think straight and find a solution to my problem. Although I may not be able to manage my insides, I can manage my outside by eliminating things that made my anxiety worse.
Information
This blog always stresses the fact that the information you have can be very useful to the way your life forms. I have a very severe case of too much information syndrome.
I believe it’s what fuels my overthinking, and my anxiety. Information is great, knowledge is power and knowledge can also be very stressful.
This is in no way discrediting the significance of the information. I love to always be in the know, I need to know what is going on around me, and I always need answers.
However, the way I chose to consume and utilize my information is what triggers my anxiety.
It’s good to have knowledge and power that comes with it, but just like everything else too much information can be unhealthy and trigger or even create real-life anxiety.
The world is extremely polluted with bad things going on in every country, rich and poor, although the poorer countries have it worse.
Reading the news was something I just enjoyed doing to keep me up to date, but this single religious act of morning news drives triggered my already existing fear of going out. I couldn’t go out anymore in fact.
I’d have some severe panic attacks and literally couldn’t leave my house for a really long time. This in itself caused my productivity to fall which also gave me some more anxiety because I actually had a ton of work to do, it was my final year in school.
So yes, I strongly believe that too much information can create and trigger anxiety.
Food consumption patterns
We are what we eat. This is a very famous saying and it is true because your food is literally the fuel of your life.
Our bodies are machines that are composed of many systems. I like to think of humans as the most fascinating creations in the world.
An intelligent life form that can do many things, good and evil. Our bodies need food to work properly.
Just like every machine, it’s better to take care of it with the right kinds of products and maintenance to increase its longevity and keep the functions running.
When you feed yourself foods that are known to slow your health functions, your body will respond in kind. Garg\bage in, garbage out.
Eating good food is the best thing you can offer your health. According to a study on ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, eating fried foods, and processed foods makes you more likely to be anxious.
Media consumption patterns
According to centreformentalhealth.org.uk, studies from the USA have found there is a strong link between the consumption of media anxiety and depression.
There are many other official studies that also indicate a positive relationship between social media consumption and anxiety/depression.
Social media is a heavy part of our daily, modern lives. I remember being a teenager and always feeling insecure compared to my peers on social. I had low self-esteem and it just got worse because of social media.
It can also be a place filled with harsh voices, insecure bullies, and desperate demons who want to suck the life out of you.
Social media can create feelings of inadequacy. Because when you compare your seemingly boring life to your peers on social media, you feel like you’re at the bottom of the pyramid.
Social and mass media affects our self-definition and esteem by likes and followers count. The more you’re consumed by social media, the more you’re exposing yourself to feel anxiety and depression.
Living patterns
Your living patterns are everything about you. Your mannerisms, movements, your dispositions, cognition, and emotions are given different situations.
There might be habits you practice every day, subconsciously or consciously which are worsening your anxiety.
These can be eating habits, the way you talk to yourself, the things you consume other than food, and your social circle.
If your first instinct is to curse yourself out, this is so not helpful for your growth. Your body is a receptor of everything you give to it, including words, thoughts, and emotions.
So if you constantly live a life where you’re saying and doing unpleasant and unhealthy things to yourself, it can keep you in fear, darkness, and anxiety for a long time.
If your go-to during bad situations is to bury your feelings, it will only worsen your anxiety, which is never good, especially over time.
Personal perception of yourself:
In our article on self-definition, we defined our perception of ourselves as a summation of our cognition, disposition, and emotions given different situations.
The way you see yourself is subconscious math. Your mind does that for you. It’s influenced by many factors such as your socialization, orientation, beliefs, relationships, Inspirations, etc.
These factors work together to influence your definition of yourself. That being said, it’s easy for you to fall into the trap of defining yourself based on negative influences or information about yourself.
How to manage anxiety
The information you consume can be beneficial or toxic to your mental health.
It’s important to identify healthy information and unhealthy information. Strife to identify your version of healthy and unhealthy information and abscond from consuming harmful information.
Thankfully (somewhat) social media algorithm adjusts to your interests so feed your social media with what kind of information you’d like to see instead, block and unfollow content that triggers your anxiety.
If some media platforms are too overwhelming for you, do yourself a favor and walk away from that platform. Look out for your mental health always.
You don’t owe any netizens an explanation or an answer. You don’t need to engage in every trend or comment or hashtag. Don’t surrender yourself to negativity.
Food is a very important aspect of your life, including your mental health.
The kind of food you consume will show in all aspects of your health.
Unhealthy food consumption patterns can alter systems in your body, and make them under or over-function, disturbing the balance.
Your food consumption can expose your body to vulnerability, best believe that if food can affect your digestive health, it can affect your mental health. Be kind to yourself, love yourself, and feed yourself with healthy foods.
Eat clean, and enjoy whole meals, food is too important to be taken lightly. Be particular about your food, and have an intention behind every ingredient that goes into your food. This is therapeutic in many ways. Don’t just eat to get by, eat to show love to your body.
Your living patterns can cause anxiety.
It helps to identify what patterns cause you to be anxious. this way you can work on managing yourself better.
Improve your organizational skills. Find the motivation to work, and find yourself the help you need.
Be in the kind of company that inspires you to be the best version of yourself. Take a break when you need it, and don’t deprive yourself of basic necessities.
Work on yourself consciously, and be active and present in your life. Spend quality time with yourself, and get to know yourself better. This way you can identify traits and patterns better, identify the paths that lead up to bad situations, etc.
Curbing bad patterns and managing bad habits is possible when you consciously dedicate time to make it happen.
Always be patient with yourself, give yourself time, and take a break when your need to. Also, don’t burn yourself or bend and break yourself to make other people happy.
Stay away from people who discourage your healthier life choices, people who intentionally Mock or despise your journey should be far from you. Find yourself in good company when you need it and cultivate the habit of doing kind things to yourself.
The point of being able to define yourself is to have better information about yourself.
This information is what’s essential to personal development because you can actually identify what you dealing with, what you’re good at, what you can’t do, and how you can do better.
This helps you in managing your emotions and keep your anxiety at bay. You can change the negative perception you have of yourself. You can rewrite your story and do so over and over again till you find your rhythm.
Self-definition is not self-judgment. Apply patience to the things you want to change. Change takes time, treat yourself like a blueprint project, and create room for learning.
Create room for correction, and actively put yourself through learning skills that will make your life or some aspects of your life easier.
Always be on the lookout for yourself, be in your life, and do things that make you healthy physically.
Start small, and express a lot of love to yourself.
Surround yourself with good-hearted people who want to genuinely help you, seek professional help, and manage yourself better.
Read More:
Effective ways to stop oversharing
How to enjoy holidays as an introvert